Wage Theft vs. Other Forms of Theft in the U.S.
We have way too many people who come to us @ the Tompkins County Workers’ Center have been the victim of Wage Theft. This image graphically lays out the monetary costs, on a national level, of Wage Theft as compared to the combination of ALL: 1) burglaries; 2) robberies; 3) larcenies; and 4) auto theft.
Sorta helps to put things into context, doesn’t it? If someone holds you up on the street for $20, that person is prolly going to jail/prison for how long? If the Owner of Green Cafe in Collegetown and NYC that we successfully closed down in 2010 gets away with over a $1 million in Wage Theft (no joke!), they TOTALLY get away with it!
Click on the picture below to see even more detail from the Economic Policy Institute (or click here).
June 22, 2021 @ 10:28 am
Investigate and go after them like they would if they were evading taxes . Then they will make sure they are paying people right . This is basically slavery . Which is illegal.
June 22, 2021 @ 12:01 pm
Truth, Kirsten! Problem is to get govt agencies to treat this stuff under CRIMINAL rather than civil law. Though things ARE moving in that direction in more progressive states……….
December 4, 2022 @ 4:41 pm
Slavery is still legal. 13th amendment “limited it” to prisoners, but never outright abolished it.
April 13, 2024 @ 11:47 am
Thank you for being aware and spreading the word!
August 1, 2021 @ 1:47 pm
Here’s the problem…it is too profitable to actually enforce labor laws. The people who do this, who rob minimum wage employees of their hard earned income spend a LOT of time and money lobbying local, state, and federal levels of government to ensure that they’re allowed to continue.
Now, let’s be honest, most min wage jobs are so easy that pretty much anyone can do it. That puts employees in a bad position. You’re easily replaceable and if you aren’t willing to work for the pittance offered, they’ll find someone else who will. These jobs may be easy, but they still require a human to do them. If I’m working a movie theater, I have to go up and down the rows hand cleaning the seats of any mess left and sweep the floors. It’s easy. Even then, I still deserve to be treated like a human.
Business owners, if you’re reading this and are tired of “millenials who job hop”, keep in mind that the people born about 1985 and later have grown up in an enviroment of economic abuse. In the 1920’s-1970’s we could look forward to pay raises and pensions and benefits. Even the janitor could. Now, all the benefits and the things that make people want to stay and build a skill set are gone. We don’t care about your vending machines or free coffee or ping pong table. We want to not live paycheck to paycheck. We want to be able to afford a tank of gas AND a meal. We want to be able to afford a doctor when we hurt ourselves and take a little time off here and there to spend time with friends and family.
“Millenials” are the easiest people to understand. Pay them fair market rates, give them basic benefits (401k, pto, decent insurance), cost of living adjustments, and the occasional raise and they’ll stay with you forever and you benefit from a person who will build an expertise in the subject matter and can work more efficiently and provide better results (and by extension a better profit margin). They’re not asking to be paid a million a year, they’re asking to be paid fairly.
December 20, 2021 @ 3:52 pm
I’ve recently seen a lot of fearmongering, from media organizations like CNN, about crime waves, about rises in shoplifting and things like that. If they give any attention to wage theft, it’s reserved for one-off opinion pieces.
The way I see it, we shouldn’t be humoring them. If media organizations cared for my opinion, I would tell them to wait until shoplifting rises above wage theft before discussing it. That, or multiply wage theft reporting by 1,000.
December 20, 2021 @ 5:44 pm
We couldn’t agree with you more, Alexander!
OPINION | Bail, Ransom, Wealth Transfer, and Real Community Safety | South Seattle Emerald
November 24, 2022 @ 1:30 pm
[…] are inundated with propaganda inflating crime rates and supporting policing, jails, and prisons. Wage theft by employers steals nearly 300% more from the public than larceny, burglary, auto theft a… combined, but you never hear about wage theft in the news, and local prosecutors spend no time […]